Rapacious
by ImagineBagginsDragon
Summary: In which Hannibal discovers something about Will that could bring the empath certain death, or comfort and security.
1. Chapter 1 (02-07 07:23:01)

_Quick note and disclaimer: This is dedicated to a new friend of mine. I don't own any one of these peeps. Peace out and if you want more chapters or smex lemme know._ _Oh, btw there's mpreg. Don't like, don't read._

Will Graham felt every stare burn on his already perspiring skin; he wondered if he should even be at a crime scene.

His senses were heightened with fear, every rustle loud as thunderclap, every twitch distracting.

He distantly heard Jack Crawford shouting at everyone to leave, and the golden, almost flaming pendulum swung. All he could hear was his heartbeat, quick and consistent.

Time tumbled backwards; he, the killer, eyed his two victims as they stood from their crumpled positions to gaze back at him with pure innocence, stripped of the blood that had adorned them moments prior.

"I brought them here under the guise of telling them a secret. I smashed their skulls together -" in his mind's eye, he grasped the sides of the victims' heads and smacked them together with as much force as he could muster, "- and they went down. I stab Henry first, through the lung. He is alive long enough to watch me slit Luke's jugular, and I leave no prints or DNA on them during all this. Henry Greene drowns in his own blood, with Luke to follow soon after."

Will paused to vomit into a rubber sealable bag, the smell of blood having caused his insides tho somersault. Calmly, he popped a mint into his mouth and analyzed what he saw. "Jack," he called, and within the moment the agent presented himself. "There has to be another body somewhere," Will said urgently.

Crawford allowed the FBI to swarm the building once more, and together they trekked outside into the snow and lo and behold, a padlocked shed lay behind the house, almost hidden by the bare trees. Upon being bellowed at, an agent strode up to them and snapped the chains before retreating.

The odor of decaying flesh made bile rise in Will's throat, burning him. He took a split-second to gauge whether or not it'd come up or not.

He yanked another baggie from his pocket, and expelled the contents of his mostly empty stomach into it. His throat felt torn. Agent Graham thought it best if he didn't consume another mint; it'd be too suspicious.

"Why'd you bring a bag?" Jack inquired, eyes narrowing.

"One must come prepared," Will replied, smiling and chuckling with more than a little uncertainty.

"I guess," Crawford said reluctantly, eyeing him skeptically.

The men turned their undivided attention to the corpses, all in various stages of rot. Will's insides flipped and he hoped fervently he wouldn't puke again. "Good God, what was he doing to them?" Crawford asked, appearing slightly unwell, which was quite a significant statement from him.

"Can you see how they're arranged? It's a grown-up little boy who wanted to be a little girl. They're dolls." That was all Crawford needed and he went off, like a jousting white knight in for the kill. Will hoped Jack's inquisitive forefinger never pointed at him; it was bad enough what he got up to behind closed doors.

So, the scene secured, Crawford drove Will home. He was tired. He was always tired now.

A pack of rumpled dogs loped up to greet Special Agent Graham, and Jack Crawford left to go home to his ill wife.

Will entered his home, inhaling the pleasant aroma of home, plus an unfamiliar scent. On the table lay an arrangement of some form of meat, tantalizing yet simple. Hannibal had been there.

Heart beating quickly enough to rival a mouse's, Will rushed around his house, dogs at his heels. His eyes danced over every conceivable thing, coming to rest on the trash can. The package was still there, concealed by a carefully placed tissue.

Paranoid, Will snatched it and sniffed, a rather strange thing to do, but with purpose. He smelt expensive cologne. Will knew instantly that He knew.

The dogs whimpered and salivated all over his ankles, wide pink tongues wiping away the sweat in an effort to calm their master and wagging their tails. Will's hands went to rest on their heads, absentmindedly stroking, then one wandered to rest on the gentle slope 'twixt his ribs and pelvis.

No one had noticed, it being winter, which required some form of heavy clothing, and he'd made a conscious effort not to instinctually reach for it.

Awaiting judgement was tiresome, and Will didn't run on enough sleep as it was. He allowed his dogs onto his bed as he lay down. Will Graham dreamt of antlers.

He woke gradually. It was still dark out, and Will rubbed his eyes with the heel of his hand.

"Will?" A soft, accented, and warm baritone voice queried. Will covered his abdomen with his comforter. "Yes?" "Why did you hide it from me?" Will dared not touch his midriff now.

"Because I know what you've done to people close to me, like Abigail. I didn't want your curiosity to reach it. Lord knows what you did to me when curious." Will's words were frostbitten.

The voice ventured closer and Winston growled softly. Will's hand stroked Winston's head; Special Agent Graham believed he might die. "Hush," he whispered gently to the russet dog. Tears stung his eyes. He was exhausted and emotional. "Is it such fantasy that you owe me this one thing?" Graham accused.

"Crawford would be suspicious if you wore ill-fitting shirts and declared cravings for horseradish and Miracle Whip atop Twinkies." Will violently retched into the nearest trash can. "Apologies. However, I am right."

Will, chest heaving and perspiration dotting his forehead, popped a mint into his mouth. "Look, I'm not saying you're wrong -" the hope of living blossomed within Will, "- I'm only saying that I need you to allow me this one precious thing. Or things."

Moonlight glinted off sanguine irises speckled with maroon. "I realize this. Would you deny me the right to be there for you and them, as your mother wasn't?"

Tears pricked Graham's eyes and slid down his face. "You have no right to bring her up. She'd be rolling in her grave if she saw me now." Winston rested his head on Will's belly. "Will, this is the last time I'll ask you. Run away with me. When you'll want wild, rough intimacy later on, you'll need me."

Will grinned. "What if I want it now, Hannibal?" There was a low chocolatey rumble as Dr. Lecter chuckled. "Well, then. Who am I to deny you such?"


	2. Chapter 2

_AN: This may not be my best but I'm trying. I want to see updates just as much as you._

The thing hanging above Crawford's head defied description.

It wasn't a dark cloud, like normal miserable people attracted.

This was a swirling mass of agony, tainting to the soul.

Will sat next to him, aware of how much the material of his suit hugged him and wondering if anyone else noticed.

Jack didn't, that was for certain.

He was far too invested in reciting Bella's eulogy in his head.

"I think her last moments were her greatest triumph," Graham opined, slicing open the silence and letting it bleed.

"How so?" Crawford mumbled into his palms.

"This was the one choice she could make left. Everyone else decided that it was too morbid and too heartbreaking to try, but the cancer is worse. Those people didn't have a choice. She did, and she knew it."

"At least she died in her sleep," Crawford agreed, choking on his own words as though they were nettles.

Her medicine had ensured that.

"Jack, I'm ready to find the Chesapeake Ripper," Will said gently after a time.

This brought Jack out of his misery for a brief moment and dragged him into anger.

"I want you to be certain. If you're anything less than positive, I'm not going to let you do it. Let some other sorry sap take your place," he snapped.

Will sighed, rubbing at a kink in his back. "I've written a will-"

"- Don't do this to me now, Will."

"- and I want you to read it and learn it. I'm prepared to make the leap Miriam Lass did," the empath continued, with a withered look of sympathy.

Jack sat up a bit. "D'you have it on you?"

"I do, actually."

Crawford narrowed his eyes at Will. "This means you think you'll die."

"It's a great possibility. I may have even met the Ripper already. I believe Miriam met them and thus met her end," the special agent countered reasonably.

Jack knew he was right, but whenever it was something he didn't want to hear, he often became infuriated or took an excruciatingly long time analyzing what was said.

In this case, he became infuriated.

"That bastard is the sole reason I haven't retired," he seethed, knuckles paling as he clenched his fists. "You may be resigned about dying, but I'm not going to let you. You get a lead and you call me, damn it."

"Oh, I'm far from resigned about it. However, we can't both exist in the field; it's me, or them."

"That's so cliché I could barf." Jack growled.

"Isn't that how it should be, Jack? You wouldn't let the Ripper live. They wouldn't let you live. It's them or us. I know how little regard you have for the law when it comes to this guy."

Crawford nodded begrudgingly.

Upon seeing Price, Zeller, and Katz grace the room with their presences, the two stood.

"I suppose I have to talk to people," Jack grumbled.

"Did you invite Hannibal?" Will asked curiously, taking a sip of some too-sweet and too-cheap lemonade before setting it down with a very displeased expression.

"Outside of couple's counseling, he didn't know her-"

Will sucked in air subconsciously.

"-but I invited him. He's good to have around," Jack continued.

"Indeed," Will mumbled in agreement, his fingertips ghosting over his middle for a heartbeat before delving into his pocket.

He seated himself again, and Beverly spent not much time deciding where she'd go before sitting beside him.

Zeller followed, beside her, and Price beside him, spouting a fact about the Edelweiss flowers at the entrance.

Crawford appeared pained to be at the podium, and shuffled through his cards for a few minutes.

The doors opened again, and Will forced himself not to look.

Clingyness wasn't becoming on anyone.

It was Hannibal, of course.

Where Crawford had gotten up, Hannibal sat.

It was uncomfortable for Will. He didn't wish ill upon Crawford, but knowing Hannibal, ill would be all the man ever knew for some time.

"I don't like doing this. Why would I? I am glad to say that I am not accustomed to this, but I think it's fucked up that I have to be here for her when I was supposed to die before her," Crawford began.

The audience was stricken silent.

"You all knew her to some degree, but her last act of defiance was enough for anyone to see her for who she was. Suicide is ugly to me. Always has been. But in Phyllis's case, it was righteous. A 'fuck you' to God, if you will."

The audience felt slightly more inclined to laugh.

"So, I'm going to make this short. I'm pissed that she had to go, but at least she got to go out her way."

Crawford stepped down, glaring balefully, and radiated the fury he wore like a coat, just as Will wore his fear.

There were cookies at the reception.

Price and Zeller were eager for a distraction from estimating which drugs did the most damage and in what time.

Beverly and Will stood next to the refreshment table as Hannibal spoke with Jack, their voices low.

"Does the FBI do catering now?" Beverly mused.

"The cookies aren't bad. Maybe we should hold funerals for everyone who comes through," Zeller suggested through a mouthful of various kinds of said dessert.

Everyone held a collective breath a moment, waiting for him to be roared at for his morbid joke.

The window of opportunity passed, and Price giggled hysterically with laughter that had been stifled for too long.

Beverly hid a smile behind her hand, and Zeller tried not to choke on his cookies.

Then Hannibal arrived with a whoosh of tasteful cologne and peaches, Jack beside him.

The moment of mirth was cut down in its prime.

Will snatched some of the chocolate chips in order to avoid conversation as politely as he could.

He'd had enough interaction. He was beginning to feel the lightning-fast crawl of icy paranoia through his veins.

"We have to cut this short; we have to go. They just called in another Ripper murder," Crawford ordered.

He seemed to have recovered as much as humanly possible for a man at his wife's funeral.

Will shot a scathing look at Hannibal for his uncanny timing, and stuffed some cookies into his suit pockets, to the older man's dismay in favor of possibly the only suit Will owned.

Together they followed the group out.


	3. Chapter 3

_AN: For those of you who are confused, there are time skips for each chapter. The time in between varies, and is contextually explained as best I can without being distastefully explicit_. _BTW there's sex stuff. Not really sex, just almost._

Will breathed in slowly, and released the breath as though he hadn't intended to do so, but want gave way for need and he had to let it go to breathe anew.

The body before him was a message; a warning, Will knew.

The man that Will had helped Hannibal select as a plausible victim looked significantly like the empath, thin, pale, with dark, curly hair, and eyes cloudy in death.

The rest seemed characteristic, all right. Body parts missing, and the fact that he was literally woven into brambles.

It was fun to have an activity together, anyway.

The empath knew it was time to tell Jack.

"Jack, it's over. The Ripper made this piece for me."

He tugged at his suffocating collar in frustration, only for more frustration to surface in response to the revelation that the movement would not solve the issue.

The air still held a chill, but the beginnings of March were dawning and the heat within his coat was boiling.

He would not betray this, however.

He could not.

For now he would be fine, left alone to swelter beneath his layers as Hannibal brought him water every so often with wise glances.

"What do you mean it's over? We're so close. I'm putting you on a watch, Will. I'm not going to lose you. You'll be fine, and we'll catch this bastard. Lounds won't be able to stir up trouble, you can retire and find you someone nice or more stray dogs," Crawford protested.

Will felt fluttering beneath his skin and his heart ached for his dogs.

"Have you read my will?"

"We aren't going to need it!" Jack shouted.

"Did you read it?" Will urgently repeated in a plea.

His slumped demeanor was enough to finally get it through to Crawford that Will wasn't well in any sense.

"Yes, I read it. Are you sick?" Jack replied, quietly.

"I'm running myself ragged on this case, just like you. Maybe even more," Will admitted dejectedly, slightly untruthfully.

Ragged he may have been, but never in his effort in the campaign against the Ripper.

Crawford seemed to be battling himself.

To let Will be, or not be.

"Get some water, eat some food, and for goodness sakes, don't run on caffeine," Jack responded, apparently deciding on the latter.

Will set his decaf coffee aside. No need for suspicion.

"D'you mind if I come back to this?" Graham asked.

Jack nodded. "I want you back here in two hours."

Will's head bobbed in response, and then he paused a moment. "You were going to hire me a bodyguard?" he drawled, amused.

"Hannibal has excellent taste in food if you happen to get some, which you should," the director of the FBI noted, with pointed looks at both of them.

Will idly compared Jack for a moment to a mother who unwittingly paired her child with the bad kid on the block just because she felt her baby needed to socialize.

Not that Hannibal was the bad kid on the block. He was more of a wolf.

When he resurfaced from these thoughts, he was sitting in the passenger's seat in Hannibal's car, and they were pulling away from the scene.

Sighing with relief, Will struggled free from his coat as though it were the weight of the world.

He looked slightly comical and dissheveled, his chest heaving and shirt having ridden up slightly.

Hannibal cast a casual bemused gaze over to him, as Will sheepishly yanked his shirt down.

"You know, I'd almost rather you give up the jig than you smother yourself," he commented smoothly, lips quirking upward as he drove.

Will shifted his gaze rather grumpily down at the gentle, firm slope of his belly, hardly hidden by the shirt he had barely pulled on that morning.

"It's not easy, Hannibal. Were it you in my condition, it wouldn't be a simple matter to explain away why you suddenly started dressing worse."

Hannibal snorted. "Indeed."

Will mused for a moment how Hannibal would look, dressed in his own stifling layers of flannel and denim in effort to conceal what lay beneath.

Unable to create an accurate image, he huffed and sat up straighter.

"Crawford was right to tell you to eat and drink," Hannibal stated.

"That's the nice way of saying I look like shit. Thanks," Will replied, turning his head to peer out the window.

The scenery slowed and tilted, coming to a complete halt before he felt Hannibal's hands on him.

Startled, he turned, and Dr. Lecter's blood-spattered irises forced him to subdue.

A hand rested on his abdomen, and the other on the side of his face, cupping it before it slid behind to the nape, and he tugged Will forward until his lips connected with Graham's neck.

His tongue shot out to taste, sending shivers coursing through the recipient.

He licked the salt from the skin beneath meticulously, and bit down, hard enough to break the skin, and Will could feel the blood gush from the wound sluggishly, into Hannibal's waiting mouth.

Hannibal lifted Will and settled him in his lap, teeth still buried in his weeping neck.

Will breathed out in a rush, aware that he had kept it far too long, as was happening often recently.

He felt Hannibal in his inner thigh, hard and still hardening.

"I want the only marks on you physically and mentally to be mine. It tears me apart to see you marked by what is ours, but I would allow it for none else. You are beautiful," Lecter remarked, wiping his bloody mouth with his knuckles.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder," Will mumbled in between cries as he began to grind incessantly against Hannibal.

"I happen to be a connoisseur," Dr. Lecter purred in his ear, before thrusting upward.

Will gasped. "Hannibal," he breathed insuccinctly in a request, grasping aimlessly at the muscles of Hannibal's back.

"Clearly," Hannibal ordered.

"I want you to stop. I don't want to have sex in a car, as fun as it may be," the agent said with finality, triumphant in his successful reach for clarity.

"I have tinted windows," Hannibal countered, amused at the man atop his lap.

"What if someone stops to check the car to see if we need help?"

"I pity the man who would dare look upon during our festivites."

Will snorted, half-heartedly tugging himself back over to his own seat. "Just shut up, take me home, feed me, and tell me I'm pretty," he snarked.

"Such manners."

"Yeah, yeah."


End file.
